Forge & Manuel - Tuesday afternoon

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

After scrupulously avoiding each other for months, Forge and Manuel come to a confrontation in the infirmary. It does not go well.



He could get his drugs faster in a pharmacy. Impatiently, Manuel waited in a seat, one hand covering his face while he looked out through his fingers, watching what looked to be nothing in particular. He was the only one here and he allowed himself to hunch as was comfortable now days. Hunch, slouch and sink into his seat, taking the weight off the right side of his normal looking, impaired body. Closing his eyes from the bright lights, Manuel measured his breathing, focusing on the headache that beat against his skull, along with the bombarding of emotions he dealt with on top of that.

The door opened - but not the door into the infirmary, but the one leading from the hall into the small waiting room. An uneven shuffle-click preceded Forge's syncopated gait into the room, and he closed the door behind him without noticing Manuel. Walking over to rap his metal knuckles on the infirmary door. A quickly barked response, tinged with an irritated Russian accent, sent the young inventor back shaking his head and producing a mostly-empty pill bottle from his pocket.

Popping the lid, Forge downed the last of his painkillers and slumped into a chair, cautiously rubbing his temples. Slowly, he looked up from between tented hands to see Manuel in an almost identical posture across the room.

"Oh hell."

He opened his eyes and peered at Forge across from him. Oh hell was not the words he would have used. Silence would have been preferable though he must attempt effort in order to recieve it. "They're taking their time." Go play with traffic while you wait. It was a shame Forge wasn't a telepath.

"There's probably something important going on. Priorities, you know." What I wouldn't give for a truck right now... Forge thought, not caring whether or not the empath could sense the almost visible contempt in his tone.

He had no care for this, but even as Manuel closed his eyes away from the bright lights, so did he close them to the colours emanating around Forge. The disdain leaked into his indifference and he rolled his eyes. "Are you finished?"

"Not even close," Forge said with false politeness. "The jet's framework's almost done with the first stage, and I've established the running parameters for the avionics software, but there's still a ways to go. And the security software's being upgraded, so I have to double-check that and - oh, of course, that's just my job. You know, the reason I have for being here. Contributing to the well-being of others. And how've you been getting along, Manny? Frittered away another inheritance lately?"

"Get over it Forge. No one is listening," Manuel said. "Why don't you take that arm of yours and make good use of it. Shove it down your throat so the rest of us don't have to hear you."

Forge smirked. "Wow, hostility. I'm shocked. An open show of uncontrolled emotion from the Great Empath? Maybe this is a breakthrough!" He leaned forward and continued in a stage whisper. "Maybe the next time you push someone in front of a truck, you'll wake up from your coma and turn into a real boy! You're almost there!"

"What is your game? Truthfully, because if it's being annoying, you've succeeded." This was well past annoying. This seethed into Manuel like venom and control was not within his reach.

Forge leaned back in the chair, steeping his fingers and giving a sardonic smile. "That's one of the things that sets you and I apart, Manny. Well, aside from me being a genuine benefit to the world and you being a self-serving sample of carbon-based wastage. You know, at least in a coma, you were a good object lesson. Don't be a twisted manipulative sociopath, or the universe will drop a truck on you. Now? You're not good for much of anything, are you? How's it feel, the proud scion of the de la Rochas reduced to a cripple who has to beg for hospitality? It's got a sense of poetry to it."

"You obviously prove yourself worthy of being here," Manuel snapped, sitting up and felt a tremor in his right fist as he clenched it against the arm rest. "You're very quick to point out the cripple when without your egotistical mutation, you'd be _useless_. Usted pedazo de mierda." A small glow of red began in the center of his irises and Manuel tightened his fist, Forge's emotions sweeping through him in a gust that would have winded him mentally. "We're not very different, you and I in the physical regard. Perhaps that is what makes you so bitter, while you flaunt all your powers, your insecurities simmer beneath the surface." The faint red glow in his eyes brightened, not knowing he was receiving as much as he was projecting, sending a loop of animosity between them.

Forge lurched to his feet, ignoring the sudden spike of pain in his side as he glared at Manuel. "I overcome my difficulties," he spat, "What have you done?" He took a halting step towards the empath, hands clenching and unclenching. "What have you done, aside from play the sympathy card, nothing's ever poor Manuel's fault. Everyone so quick to give forgiveness, second chances, third chances, in this misguided belief that you can be different this time!"

Halfway across the waiting room, Forge braced himself against the wall, pointing at Manuel, unaware of the continuing buildup of hostility in his mind. "They look at you and see something to be pitied! A broken child! But I'm not fooled. I see the bastard who manipulated his way into the mind of an emotionally vulnerable woman when she needed support. I see the fiend who put two of my best friends through the darkest hell of their lives in Monaco. I see you for what you are, Manuel. The devil himself, and perhaps it's time someone took a stand."

"You really are an _insufferable_ idiot," came his indignant response. "Keep telling yourself you're God and play your judgements. Like I said, no one... _no one_ is listening because they know what I am. You cling to what you _think_ you know." Manuel's fingers dug into the armrest and he would have been standing if he knew he could stand for long. "I don't have to play any cards because there is no game here. No _gain_ ! Are you so self absorbed that you cannot see that? Or too stupidly blind to know the difference? With all your vast knowledge and mutation, can you not see past the bridge of your own nose?"

Manuel took in a sharp gasp at the rush of emotion that hammered on him. "You were _NOT_ there!" Manuel yelled banging his fist into the chair. His eyes blazed and his lips curled in a sneer. He couldn't pull out of this, couldn't recognize that it was not his own emotions that he amplified and projected back.

The flash of red from Manuel's eyes was mirrored in Forge's own, as he stepped forward, gripping Manuel by the front of his shirt with his right hand and hauling the Spaniard up out of his chair. Left hand cocked back by his ear, metal knuckles clenched, Forge grimaced as he looked into Manuel's face. "If I'd have been there, none of this would have happened!" he hissed. "I could have prevented it all! I could have stopped him before he went too far!"

"Consiga las manos de mí, usted suciedad!" Manuel's trembling right hand locked onto that metal hand while his free left, his good hand, swung to connect with flesh. Not once, but twice, three times if he had to, to get Forge to let him go.

The punches didn't have much force behind them, but the impact was enough to shock Forge to his senses, temporarily breaking the empathic loop. Dropping Manuel and holding one hand to his face, he backed away. "Manuel," he said as flatly as he could. "Your power's making a loop again, you've... we've got to break it."

With an unsteady motion, Forge slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor of the waiting room. "Get out of my head, Manuel. Please." It was the last word that was the hardest, spoken through clenched teeth.

Without his cane, Manuel's legs crumpled to the floor and it was enough to jarr him from what was happening. "I.." He pressed a hand to his eyes, closing them as though it would stop the red glow. "I cannot," he snapped, the truth of his word plain between them. Turning away, he crawled over to the cane and grabbed, it, clutching to lift himself from standing. He had to leave. His legs trembled, stumbling until he gripped the door knob and almost fell. He had to leave and go to his room. He had to get away from Forge. Even out of this room, his powers focusd on Forge, forced that loop and a panic washed through him. Remy would know. This would be his fault.

It took him ten minutes of lost control to get to his room. Ten long minutes of a focused loop on Forge until he got to his room, closed the door and dropped to his knees. The cane fell a few feet away but Manuel barely noticed. He was alone with his emotions and they focus on him, on his fear, on his anger and he balled his fists pressed into the floor. Control. He needed _control_. "No. NO!!"

Forge remained kneeling until the door to the infirmary opened. As if from a distance, he heard Amelia asking if everything was all right.

"Yes. Yes," he said, rising to his feet with an inscrutable look as he passed the doctor his empty pill bottle. "Everything's going to be just fine."